SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1655 (17), Wednesday, May 11, 2011
**************************************************************************


TITLE: Legality of Demolition of Historic Barracks Contested
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Another planning controversy is developing in the city, as more historic buildings in the center were demolished last week to make way for luxury apartment and office buildings. 
Built by architect Fyodor Volkov in the early 19th century, the demolished buildings on the corner of Paradnaya Ulitsa and Vilensky Pereulok are known as the Preobrazhensky Regiment’s Barracks and used to house one of the Russian army’s oldest regiments, formed by Peter the Great in the late 17th century.
Following a public outcry, Governor Valentina Matviyenko ordered an internal investigation into the legality of a construction permit issued by the St. Petersburg State Construction Supervision and Expertise Service (Gosstroinadzor). The agency is subordinated directly to Matviyenko.
Matviyenko’s orders were based on a memorandum sent to her by City Hall’s Heritage Protection Committee (KGIOPP) after the last building was demolished on May 3.
Yulia Minutina, a coordinator of preservationist group Living City, said that Gosstroinadzor issued the construction permit that contradicted the protected zones law.
The local press suggested that the investigation may result in the dismissal of Gosstroinadzor’s head Alexander Ort. Preservationists and public figures such as film director Alexander Sokurov asked Matviyenko to dismiss Ort in a petition in January.
The developer failed to show the demolition permit, according to Minutina.
“Demolition is a separate type of work that requires a separate permit,” Minutina said Tuesday.
“Nevertheless, it was not presented to us, nor have they seen it at the KGIOPP and I’m not sure it ever existed. Of course this is a violation.”
“Besides, buildings in the center can only be demolished if they are in a poor condition, but we haven’t seen any document stating that the building was in a poor state and impossible to restore either.”
Minutina said the demolition was one of the issues the preservationists are planning to raise during a planned meeting with Matviyenko on Thursday.
While the last building was being destroyed during the May Day holidays, the authorities did not react to the appeals of concerned residents. At the same time, police reportedly harassed activists who picketed the demolition site, rather than checking whether the developer had the necessary permits.
“We waited for two hours for the police to arrive,” Living City’s Pyotr Zabirokhin said.
“But instead of stopping the demolition, they started checking our passports, copying our placards into their notebooks and threatening to disperse us if we didn’t go away.”
St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Deputy Sergei Malkov has written a complaint regarding the police actions to the St. Petersburg police chief Vladislav Piotrovsky.
The tactic of demolishing historic buildings during public holidays was recently used when a large portion of the 19th-century Literary House was destroyed on Nevsky Prospekt during the Russian Christmas holidays in January, Zabirokhin pointed out.
“It has turned into a bad tradition that not entirely legal cases of demolition start during or just before holidays, when people are not ready to get mobilized quickly, and while officials are on holiday and nobody can be reached,” he said.
According to the project’s web site, the area previously occupied by the Preobrazhensky Regiment Barracks will be home to an “exclusive” Paradny Kvartal, an isolated “mini city” of 16 office and residential buildings.
“The true adornment of the quarter’s center will be a square with a fountain, comparable in size with that in front of the Kazan Cathedral,” the web site said. 
However, apparently as a result of the controversy, the site was no longer available on Tuesday, redirecting to the web site of the developer, Vozrozhdeniye Peterburga. The original site can be viewed as files cached in Google.
Anna Mironovskaya, the marketing director of Vozrozhdeniye Peterburga, a subsidiary of the LSR Group, said Tuesday her company was only a sub-investor and was not in charge of legal matters and permits, citing the Ministry of Defense as the project’s developer and the Pyotr Veliky Construction Company as the commissioner.


TITLE: IN BRIEF
TEXT: <b>Alisa Founder Dies</b>
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Svyatoslav Zadery, founder of the rock group Alisa and front man of the group Here You Go! died in St. Petersburg late in the evening of May 6, the musician’s official web site said, Interfax reported.
The artist’s funeral service was due to be held on May 10 at 11:30 a.m. at the Prince Vladimir Cathedral. Zadery was due to be buried at the Bolsheokhtinsky Cemetery next to his father.
It was previously reported that Zadery had been taken to Pokrovsky Hospital on April 30 and diagnosed with a hemorrhagic stroke and partial paralysis. He underwent surgery.
Zadery, a musician and singer and founder of the rock groups Crystal Ball and Alisa, was born in Leningrad in 1960.

TITLE: Trial of the ‘Pearl Cop’ Boiko Reopens 
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A court began hearing a criminal case last week against police officer Vadim Boiko, who is accused of hitting a man with his baton during a July 31, 2010 rally for the freedom of assembly.
Previously, the hearings for the trial that started on Feb. 9 were cut short, largely as a result of Boiko’s motions to postpone the hearing or his failure to attend due to an alleged health problem. 
Judge Yevgeny Didyk of the Kuibyshevsky District Court listened to the testimonies of five prosecution witnesses and one defense witness on Thursday.
At the beginning of the hearing, Boiko — who has been dubbed the “Pearl Cop” in the Russian media for the Islamic beads he wore on his wrist when dispersing the rally — cited his 15-year length of service and asked the judge to refer to him as a “police officer,” rather than as the “defendant.”
The judge rejected Boiko’s request.
Footage of Boiko swearing at and insulting the public during the arrests near Gostiny Dvor on Nevsky Prospekt, and of him hitting a man — Dmitry Semyonov — on the head with a police baton is available on the web.
“The defense witness was a police major, Boiko’s chief,” Semyonov said.
“He said that he did not see the [attack], but he had unpleasant things to say about Boiko. According to police rules, Boiko had no right to use the baton on anyone’s head. Before the rally, they were instructed not to use police tactical gear at all — only in extreme cases if attacked.”
According to the video footage and witness testimonies, Boiko seized Semyonov by his hair and hit him with a baton during the rally after Semyonov told Boiko that it was inappropriate to swear. 
After he was hit, Semyonov, who said he was an onlooker rather than a participant in the rally, was detained and charged with violating the rules for the holding of public events.
Semyonov’s appeal to the court decision that found him guilty of the offense — punishable by a fine — will be heard at the Dzerzhinsky District Court on Thursday.
Boiko is charged with “exceeding authority in the use of police tactical equipment.” Although police beatings have been frequently reported during the rallies, no other officer has yet been charged with the offense, which is punishable by five to 10 years in prison.
Boiko insists he is not guilty. 
The next hearing has been scheduled for May 24.


TITLE: Cameraman Falls From Boat, Body Sought
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pavel Balakirev, a 26-year-old cameraman on the local television news program Vesti on Rossiya TV channel, died tragically on Thursday when he fell off a sailing boat into the Neva River about 100 meters away from the Blagoveshchensky bridge.
The television crew, which consisted of Balakirev and a news correspondent, was traveling on a small vessel named the Zapovedny and filming city views around midday on Thursday, May 5, when the accident happened. The boat’s crew included a captain and two assistants.
All navigation in the Neva River was brought to a complete standstill on Friday morning to allow a thorough search operation involving seven diving teams and two support vessels. The search continued on Saturday but yielded no results.
Balakirev’s body had still not been found by Tuesday evening. 
“The rescue operation was very difficult, considering the river’s very strong current in that area; the current is so fast that it makes it almost impossible for the divers to work,” a spokesman for the local branch of the Emergency Situations Ministry told the Interfax News Agency. “On top of that, the depth of the river in the search area is 8 to 11 meters, which makes it even tougher for the divers.”
Witnesses say the cameraman was particularly unlucky as he fell from the boat where the current is at its strongest and with a heavy camera on his shoulder.
A preliminary investigation being carried out by the Emergency Situations Ministry has suggested that the accident happened because of a failure of both the crew and the passengers to observe the required safety precautions, Interfax reported.


TITLE: Pulkovo Airport To Get Round-the-Clock Bus Service
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Pulkovo airport has inked a deal with AT Express Group to launch a new shuttle bus service that will link the airport with the city center. The service will operate round the clock, with the schedule of shuttles being adjusted to the flight schedules so that all passengers can get to the city center without having to hire a taxi.
It is expected that the new shuttle express will start operating in June for the start of the St. Petersburg International Economic forum which opens on June 16.
The shuttle service’s final destination is as yet undecided. The investors have to make a choice between Gostiny Dvor, the Vladimirskaya metro station and Sennaya Ploshchad. A one-way trip on the shuttle will cost 200 rubles ($7), which is almost ten times more expensive than traveling on public transport bus no.39, which operates between Pulkovo I airport and Moskovskaya metro station, or bus no. 13 that operates between Pulkovo II and the Moskovskaya metro station. The marshrutka minibus taxis operating on the same route charge 30 rubles ($1).
The marshrutkas and the public buses do not operate at night.
The planned fare for the service is a tiny fraction of what a taxi would charge, especially at night when the prices soar as passengers are left with no alternatives. 
During the first months of the service’s operation, there will be only eight shuttles circulating on the route, but the investors have promised to increase the number of buses to 20 vehicles in the near future.
Tickets will be sold at both the domestic and international Pulkovo terminals. Those who travel from the city to the airport will be able to buy tickets directly on the bus. The bus schedule will also be available at Pulkovo.
At least two parallel projects connecting the airport with the city center are also now being developed. Russian Railways is planning to provide a shuttle express between Pulkovo and Baltiisky Railway Station, while City Hall has teamed up with a group of investors to establish a bus route linking Pulkovo with the Moscow Train Station.


TITLE: ‘Letter to Obama’ Gets Veteran a Roof
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: At the height of the celebrations of yet another anniversary of the end of World War II, a desperate local pensioner brought the poverty of Russia’s veterans into the international spotlight by sending an appeal to U.S. President Barack Obama asking the American leader to put a roof over his head.
Each year on May 9, the date Russia marks as the end of World War II, also known as Victory Day, there is no shortage of words of gratitude for those who helped defeat fascism. There is also no deficit in promises coming from the country’s officials at all levels, right up to President Dmitry Medvedev, to improve the quality of life of war veterans. One such specific promise that came from Medvedev included a pledge to provide all war veterans with their own apartments.
St. Petersburg pensioner and war veteran Anton Karavanets, 83, who lives in a rented apartment, believed Medvedev’s word and spent the last two years writing requests and banging on the doors of the local authorities in the hope that the promise would actually take shape, especially considering his venerable age. Karavanets’ hope gave out shortly before this year’s Victory Day, prompting what the pensioner himself described as a gesture of despair: The old man, who saved the lives of several U.S. soldiers during World War II, wrote a letter to Barack Obama asking if his country would perhaps take an interest in his plight.
At the end of 1945, Karavanets took part in a military operation in China, liberating U.S. prisoners of war from a concentration camp.
“I live the life of a pauper, I feel redundant in my own country, the country I once risked my life for,” Karavanets wrote. “Yet another anniversary since the end of the Second World War is approaching, there are fewer and fewer of us, war survivors, left…What I am wondering is if American war veterans have the sort of problems that I am going through. Maybe I could get in contact with the U.S. soldiers that we rescued from that camp? Perhaps you think I am going insane, but I know that you can work wonders. I am 83 years old, but I am full of energy and I want to enjoy life. My country obviously does not need me, so maybe your country would be sympathetic toward my plight?”
Karavanets submitted his letter to the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg.
Karavanets’ desperate letter, which risks embarrassing the local authorities on an international level, provoked an immediate reaction from Smolny. Within days of the news about the pensioner’s appeal to Obama leaking out, Alexander Rzhanenkov, head of City Hall’s Social Care Committee, called a news conference to announce that the local government is offering the veteran a one-room apartment in an elderly people’s dormitory on 2nd Sovietskaya Ulitsa. The flat cannot be privatized or inherited by the tenant’s relatives.
Rzhanenkov, who has met the veteran in person to make the offer, said the pensioner “appeared interested in the proposal and may soon visit the apartment to make his final judgment.”
“We took a decision to offer an apartment to the veteran to allow this honorable man to enjoy a healthy and happy life,” Rzhanenkov told reporters at a news conference on May 6. 
“We will give all our support to the old man,” the official added.
A native of the Republic of Buryatia, Karavanents moved to St. Petersburg in 2001 after he survived a cancer operation and sold his flat. The veteran chose St. Petersburg in order to join his son, who has a family of his own. However, upon arriving in the city, Anton Karavanets decided to live separately, as he did not want to burden his son. The pensioner, who gets a monthly pension of 25,000 rubles ($900), rents an apartment on Ulitsa Reshetnikova.

TITLE: Putin Begins Formation of Pre-Vote ‘Front’
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Non-United Russia politicians of all stripes have united to denounce an initiative by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to form a nonpartisan group as little more than a ploy to save the ruling party from defeat in December’s parliamentary elections.
Putin announced the formation of the All-Russia People’s Front at a United Russia conference in Volgograd on Friday, saying the group would allow the election of non-party members on United Russia’s ticket to the State Duma.
He rushed ahead with the plan Saturday by presiding over the group’s first coordinating council, where he acknowledged that the All-Russia People’s Front was necessary because United Russia needs “new ideas, new suggestions and new faces” before the elections.
United Russia, headed by Putin without being a member, dominates practically all of the country’s legislatures, but its support slid below 50 percent in regional elections in March.
“This is an attempt to create a single-party system,” said Leonid Gozman, a co-leader of the pro-business Right Cause party.
Putin said Friday that the front would unite social organizations such as trade unions, business associations and youth organizations on an “absolutely equal” basis, Interfax reported.
On Saturday, he said he hoped the front would create “a brainstorm” of ideas by bringing in new leaders, according to a transcript on his web site.
Putin also said he would meet with the front’s coordinating committee as often as monthly and called for the development of regional branches.
Gozman, whose party was founded with Kremlin support after the demise of the Union of Right Forces party in 2008, said the front closely resembled the Soviet-era Bloc of Communists and Non-Party Members.
“Anyone who does not join this group could be regarded as against the people,” he told The St. Petersburg Times.
He said the sole purpose of the front would probably be to mask vote rigging in the Duma elections. “This organization won’t gather a single extra vote for United Russia, but they [United Russia] will try to use it to legitimize their good results,” he said.
Leaders of opposition groups also not represented in the Duma shared contempt for Putin’s initiative.
“The aim is crystal clear: to keep personal power and the power of the party of crooks and thieves,” said Boris Nemtsov, a founder of the unregistered Peoples’ Freedom Party.
Nemtsov, writing in his blog, said Putin was acting out of sheer desperation because not only was the popularity of United Russia plummeting, but his personal rating has also dropped to a two-year low. Putin’s popularity, however, remains well above 50 percent.
While Putin stressed that political parties were welcome to join his new front, each of the Duma’s three nominal opposition parties declined.
“This is a sham. After all, United Russia has fought against public organizations over the past few years,” Ilya Ponomaryov, a deputy with A Just Russia, said by telephone Monday.
A Just Russia has had a rocky relationship with United Russia recently, culminating in a dispute over the possible ouster of Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, the former leader of the party.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, said the front was nonsense. “It amounts to a public acknowledgement that they cannot change anything in the country,” he told Interfax.
The Communists noted that many who participated in Saturday’s meeting were already complicit with United Russia. “A broad people’s front cannot exist without the people — but around United Russia there are no people in the real sense of the word,” deputy party leader Ivan Melnikov said in comments posted on the party’s web site.
Indeed, the meeting at Putin’s Novo-Ogoryovo residence was attended almost exclusively by organizations not known for their independent-mindedness.
Among the participants was Mikhail Shmakov, leader of the Kremlin-friendly Federation of Independent Trade Unions; Timur Prokopenko, chairman of United Russia’s youth wing Young Guard; and the heads of the Pensioners’ Union and the Afghan War Veterans’ Union, both of whom are United Russia deputies in the Duma.
Some mild dissent was discernible in the comments of Alexander Shokhin, head of the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, who stressed that the front should be long-term and not a United Russia project before the elections, according to the transcript on Putin’s site.
Other business representatives at Saturday’s meeting were Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Sergei Katyrin, Sergei Borisov of the Opora association of small and medium-sized businesses and Vladimir Gutenev of the Engineering Association.
Shokhin also questioned the use of the word “front,” saying other political organizations have already used the word in their names. “We don’t need a first, second, third [front],” he said. Last month, the Justice Ministry rejected a fifth registration attempt by the leftist Rot Front party.
Putin said reservations had been raised when he proposed naming his group “front” but said the name “All-Russia front” was chosen to resolve them. In a seeming acknowledgement that the initiative was last minute, he conceded that he had discussed the name issue late Friday — between 11 p.m. and midnight.


TITLE: First Fires Lead To Smog 
Jitters
AUTHOR: By Natalya Krainova

PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — As warm May weather revives memories of the smog that caused the capital to choke for weeks last summer, the Emergency Situations Ministry has offered assurances that it has control over the source of the air pollution — burning peat bogs and forests in the Moscow region.
Yevgeny Sekirin, head of the ministry’s branch in the region, acknowledged that bogs and forests have started smoldering outside Moscow but said the total affected area is relatively small.
Sekirin, speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio on Friday, said 18 forest fires covering 21 hectares and five peat bogs on 1.3 hectares are burning in the Moscow region. In addition, he said, 2,500 grass fires occupying an area of about 32 hectares have been put out since the start of the year.
No casualties were reported.
Greenpeace Russia has accused the ministry of downplaying the issue by tweaking the wildfire statistics. The watchdog did not provide its own statistics but said on its web site Thursday that there were “several dozen fires” in the Sergiyevo-Posadsky district of the Moscow region that firefighters were ignoring.
The ministry has accused Greenpeace of misreporting wildfires, but the group denied the accusations, saying Thursday that its volunteers were busy fighting fires in an area that the ministry declared smoke-free. The claims could not be immediately reconciled.
Last summer, some 1,000 peat bog fires broke out over 1,500 hectares of the Moscow region, Moscow region Deputy Governor Nikolai Pishchev told Rossiiskaya Gazeta in late April. Nationwide, the total area engulfed by wildfires reached 200,000 hectares last summer.
Carelessness was to blame for most of the fires, Sekirin said. He did not elaborate. But he told Prime-Tass last year that only 10 percent of peat bog fires are due to natural causes, as opposed to carelessly discarded cigarette butts or the mishandling of fire by people on camping trips.
Peat bogs occupy 254,000 hectares in the Moscow region, Pishchev said. About 65,000 hectares of those, mostly in the eastern and southern parts of the region, need to be flooded to prevent fires.
About 22,000 hectares will be flooded this year, with the rest to follow by 2013, Pishchev said, adding that the flooding program would cost a total of 3.7 billion rubles ($133 million).
Funding for preventing and combating wildfires in the Moscow region stands this year at 636 million rubles ($23 million), “hundreds of times” more than in 2010, Pishchev told Interfax on Friday.

TITLE: Two Nationalists Jailed For Murdering Lawyer
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — An ultranationalist was sentenced to life in prison, and his girlfriend received an 18-year sentence for the brazen daylight killing of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and a Novaya Gazeta reporter.
Nikita Tikhonov, 31, received the maximum sentence after the court convicted him of gunning down Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. Tikhonov’s 26-year-old girlfriend, Yevgenia Khasis, was convicted as an accomplice in the January 2009 attack, and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
A jury earlier ruled that Tikhonov was the masked killer who used a 1910 Browning pistol to shoot Markelov and Baburova as they walked out of a news conference into a snowy street near the Kremlin. Khasis followed the two from the conference hall and helped Tikhonov identify the lawyer and the reporter, who wore heavy winter clothes and hats.
The defendants, who denied the charges, smiled from their courtroom cage as the judge read aloud the sentence Friday, appearing uninterested at times and whispering to each other throughout. They were convicted a week earlier.
Judge Alexander Zamashnyuk said the defendants were “led by the idea of their own superiority and ideological hatred toward Markelov.”
Tikhonov, with tattooed Celtic symbols on his arms and bandages on his wrists, shouted to the judge that he “understood the sentence.” Celtic imagery is popular among Russian neo-Nazis, with the Celtic cross thought to be a substitute for the swastika.
“We will come out much earlier,” Tikhonov said as police escorted him and Khasis out of the courtroom.
Defense lawyer Alexander Vasilyev called the sentence “illegal and unfounded” and said he would appeal, while senior prosecutor Boris Laktionov said he was “satisfied” with the outcome.
The 34-year-old Markelov’s work had angered nationalists, who had threatened him and cheered his killing in Internet comments. The lawyer also had made enemies through his work fighting for victims of rights abuses in Chechnya.
Investigators said Baburova, 25, was shot because she was a witness to the murder.
Tikhonov, the son of a counterintelligence officer, joined ultranationalist groups while studying history at Moscow State University, where he wrote a thesis on the “genocide” of ethnic Russians in Chechnya.
Police tracked down Tikhonov and Khasis by their messages on Internet forums and tapped their phones months ahead of their arrest in November 2009. In their rented Moscow apartment, investigators said the two kept an arsenal of arms and explosives, books on criminal justice and firearms, as well as detailed plans by ultranationalist groups for seizing power in Russia.
Tikhonov immediately confessed to the killing but later said he was forced to confess because police threatened to abuse Khasis.
Two prominent ultranationalists testified against him during the 2 1/2-month trial, with one of them claiming that Tikhonov planned further killings of government officials and anti-racist activists.
Markelov’s 2009 killing marked a tactical change for neo-Nazis and ultranationalists, who switched to killings of anti-racist activists and government officials and terrorist attacks, watchdog Sova said.
In April 2010, a federal judge who presided over trials of White Wolves, a mostly teenage group of skinheads convicted of killing and assaulting non-Slavs, was gunned down contract-style outside his Moscow apartment.
Members of a neo-Nazi group accused of planning to blow up a mosque, a McDonald’s restaurant and railway stations in Moscow are currently standing trial.


TITLE: Police Re-Enact Plans for Bomb At Domodedovo
AUTHOR: By Herbert Mosmuller
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Investigators closed off the main entrances at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport for an hour last weekend to re-enact terrorist preparations for the January blast that killed 37 in the international arrivals hall, Lifenews.ru reported Tuesday.
Officials were trying to understand the role played in the attack by the two detained suspects, an unidentified law enforcement source told the tabloid.
One of the two suspects, a friend of suicide bomber Magomed Yevloyev, identified only by the last name Idriyev, pleaded guilty to co-preparing the attack, saying he came to Domodedovo three days before the blast to examine its layout and map locations of police officers and metal detectors, the source said.
The other, Yevloyev’s brother Islam, admitted only to escorting his brother to the airport’s entrance on the day of the blast, but said he was not aware of the planned attack, the source said. 

TITLE: U.S. Defends Prosecution Of ‘the Merchant of Death’
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK — The U.S. government has defended the prosecution of Russian businessman Viktor Bout, revealing evidence it says shows he knew plenty about the world’s largest cocaine supplier when he agreed to supply it with weapons to fight Americans.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan described the evidence in papers filed last week in the case against Bout, who was extradited last year from Thailand to face charges that he agreed to supply weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, also known as FARC. The United States has labeled the group a terrorist organization.
Bout’s lawyers asked a judge last month to toss out the charges against him, saying he was threatened by U.S. agents in Thailand after he was arrested there in March 2008 and was brought to the United States for trial even though he had never been to the country before.
Prosecutors responded in court papers by saying evidence shows that Bout researched the FARC on the Internet before agreeing to meet with their representatives, who were actually U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration confidential sources posing as members of the group. They said a computer analysis of Bout’s laptop computer showed a variety of materials related to the FARC in an electronic file saved as “FARC.”
The file contained articles about the FARC and its objectives and proof that Bout, before going to Thailand, had accessed a web site where there was a posting of a 2005 Justice Department news release announcing the extradition of a high-ranking member of FARC and a 2001 indictment filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charging the FARC and some of its leaders with conspiring to kill Americans, the government said.
It said evidence prepared for Bout’s Oct. 11 trial would include a recording of the two-hour meeting between Bout, a co-conspirator and the two DEA sources just before he was arrested, along with records of dozens of telephone calls and text messages between Bout and the co-conspirator that were intercepted by Romanian authorities in January and February 2008. It said it also had multiple recorded telephone calls and emails between Bout and one of the DEA sources in February 2008.
Prosecutors also said they had the cooperation of Bout’s co-defendant, who has pleaded guilty in the case to the same charges facing Bout: conspiracy to kill Americans, conspiracy to kill U.S. officers and employees, conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles and conspiracy to provide material support to the FARC. Bout has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors rejected as “striking hyperbole” defense claims that the indictment should be dismissed because of outrageous conduct by the government.


TITLE: Record 20k Troops for Victory Day
AUTHOR: By Alexandra Odynova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev promised upgrades and dignity for the armed forces as a record 20,000 soldiers and officers marched across Red Square for Victory Day on Monday.
But in a change from recent years, the parade celebrating the 66th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany featured less military hardware and no warplanes.
“There are things we can’t give up under any circumstances. They are people’s liberty, a country’s dignity and peace at home,” Medvedev said in an address to the armed forces. “These are precious to everyone and make us a united nation.”
Medvedev also said Russia was committed to peace and promised a decent life to those serving in the military, which has been tarnished with hazing scandals and allegations of inefficiency in recent months.
“The state will continue to do everything to make sure that the military is properly equipped and actively upgraded with modern equipment, some of which can be seen at the parade,” he said.
About 100 units of military hardware participated in the parade, blocking off most of the city center to traffic on Monday morning as they traveled from the north of Moscow toward the Kremlin.
The units included Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, T-90A tanks, the C-400 Triumf anti-aircraft weapon system and, for the first time, the Pantsyr-S air defense system. Also on display were GAZ-2330 Tigr vehicles, although last year the Defense Ministry elected to purchase the Italian Iveco LMV M65 Lynx over the home-produced Tigrs.
For the first time in its half-century history, the parade was also joined by 200 officers from the Space Forces, Interfax reported.
While remarkable for the sheer number of troops, this year’s parade lacked warplanes, a popular feature in recent years. Several Mi-8 helicopters carrying Russian and armed forces flags flew over the square.
No official reason has been given for scaleback in planes and hardware, but Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov said last week that the parade would focus instead on foot troops and military orchestras.
The parade, aired by state television, was closed to the public. Among the invited guests were top state officials, veterans dressed in uniforms decorated with colorful ribbons and medals and Anna Chapman, the former agent returned to Russia in a spy swap last summer.
Some 3,000 policemen were on duty to maintain order, and no major incidents were reported.
Police in the southern city of Astrakhan detained about 15 people on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks in various cities on Victory Day, state television reported Sunday.
Meanwhile, a clash erupted Monday in the Ukrainian city of Lviv when a group of 300 nationalists carrying anti-communist flags brawled with police guarding Victory Day commemorations in a local cemetery, Interfax reported.
In Kyrgyzstan, the government celebrated by covering the expenses for a mass wedding for 20 couples who could not afford the costs of getting married on their own.


TITLE: EU Strategy Aims To Cut Oil Imports
AUTHOR: By Roland Oliphant
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The European Union will seek to halve its overall fossil fuel imports by 2050 under a new strategy presented in Moscow on last week.
The Road Map to a Carbon Neutral Economy by 2050 sets out a strategy for the EU to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to a mere 20 percent of 1990 levels over the next four decades.
The strategy envisages annual investments of 270 billion euros ($400 billion) — about 1.5 percent of Europe’s gross domestic product — in improving energy efficiency in buildings, transportation and the power industry, including production and transmission grids.
The policy calls for saving 175 billion to 320 billion euros in fuel costs and slashing energy consumption to 70 percent of 2005 levels.
The halving of oil and gas imports would save some 400 billion euros — about 3 percent of today’s GDP — on its bill for foreign oil and gas, the report claims.
Russian analysts greeted the plans with skepticism, but said demand from emerging Asian markets should be able to pick up the slack if the goals were achieved.
“The EU plans to replace fossil fuel with electricity for transportation and heating” said Alexander Yeremin, an oil and gas analyst at Finam. In a worst-case scenario, Russia could switch from European to Asian oil markets, but fully retain the European market for natural gas thanks to the role it plays in electricity generation, he said.


TITLE: Italian Wine-Makers Seek Protection in Russian Stores
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Seeking to protect its Russian customers from counterfeits, Asti D.O.C.G, the Italian Consortium for the Defense of the Wines of Asti, has introduced a special system of stickers that allow every bottle’s authenticity to be checked.
Every single bottle of legally produced Asti wine is now marked by a sticker that contains a unique code, a combination of letters and figures. The stickers are issued by the Italian government and distributed among the country’s winemakers every year. If customers enter the code on the www.astidocg.it web site, they can verify the authenticity of the product as well as see how many bottles of the wine have been produced by which winery and access further information.
The Asti sparkling wine consortium is the oldest of its kind in Europe. It was founded in 1932 to monitor the quality of the Asti sparkling wines, and currently unites more than 125 wineries, vineyard owners and commercial companies. A genuine Asti wine is made with grapes grown exclusively in a selected range of vineyards with a particular soil, on the territory of Piedmont, Italy.
“Russia is one of the top five key consumers of Asti wines in the world, along with the U.S., Germany, Great Britain and Italy itself,” said Paolo Ricagno, the president of Asti D.O.C.G, speaking at a news conference at the Italian consulate on April 27. “It is high time that we dealt with the counterfeit issue. It is a shame that in Russia, one of our most important markets, the customers, attracted by the good name of Asti, purchase horrendous fakes that smell so bad you wouldn’t want to taste it, and has nothing in common with our product.”
The sales of genuine Asti wines, including top-sellers Asti Cinzano and Asti Mondoro, in Russia, amount to 10 million bottles — around 10 percent of the total production — annually. The scale of counterfeiting of Asti products is difficult to assess. On every visit to Russia, the consortium’s representatives find fake Asti bottles on sale without difficulty.
“What we typically do first is contact the winemaker, inform them that we have discovered a fake [that they have produced] and demand that they stop producing it and destroy the fakes that had been produced to date,” said Benedetta Muti, a lawyer with Asti consortium. “We are willing to avoid trials wherever possible but we may have to reconsider. From what we have seen so far, some of the producers send us a formal consent to our terms but then just ignore our letters and shamelessly continue as before.”
Counterfeit alcohol remains an acute problem in Russia, with poor quality drinks and spirits claiming at least 30,000 lives every year and resulting in thousands more cases of severe poisoning.
Asti D.O.C.G. could set an example for other wine producers concerned about their reputation, loss of profit, and most importantly, the health of their potential customers who stand a fair chance of buying bootleg liquor of questionable quality under what often looks like an original label.
“The problem of counterfeit wine does not exist in Italy because every single bottle that is retailed has to be provided with the government sticker,” Muti said. “The shops would not risk selling counterfeits as they know they are closely watched.”
Russia’s own most recent campaign against counterfeit alcohol took place in 2006 and ended in disaster. During the summer of 2006, in an attempt to combat the illegal alcohol market and protect people from widely distributed but often poisonous bootleg liquor, the Russian government introduced a new system of labels for all imported wines and spirits. 
However, at the time the clampdown was meant to start, it turned out that not enough new excise labels had been printed for genuine imported wines and spirits, and that it would take months to deliver them.


TITLE: State Says Domodedovo Too Global
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — It has been struck by a suicide bomber, lashed by ice storms and suffered a plane crash in the last six months, but accusations leveled against Domodedovo this week could have more ominous consequences for the country’s most successful airport.
A verbal war began April 30 when the Prosecutor General’s Office released a statement saying that foreign companies registered offshore were managing Domodedovo airport.
“A system has been created to hide the real owners and those who are making the management decisions in Domodedovo Airport — removing them from the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and obstructing the Russian authorities from effectively exercising their control and supervision functions and from insisting that the organizations observe federal legislation.”
The investigation of which the statement was a result had been ordered by President Dmitry Medvedev.
Unlike the country’s second and third most popular airports, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo, Domodedovo is privately run. The umbrella management company, East Line Group, does have a complicated — and opaque — ownership structure, including offshore companies, but a spokesperson for the airport said Wednesday that this is not in violation of any Russian laws.
Although there is no paper trail to the beneficial owners, it is widely understood that businessman Dmitry Kamenshik, chairman of Domodedovo’s board of directors, and Valery Kogan, director of the airport’s supervisory board — the only company figures profiled on the Domodedovo web site — are in charge and reap the financial rewards.
“I don’t think the president or the General Prosecutor’s Office have any doubts about how things work,” said Alexei Yekimovsky, editor of the Business Directory of Russian Transport.
Kogan, 60, was 47th on Forbes’ April 2011 list of the richest Russians, with a personal fortune of $2 billion. Kamenshik, 43, was in 86th place with $1.1 billion. Forbes lists both of them as deriving their money from Domodedovo Airport.
Convoluted holding structures with multiple companies registered in different jurisdictions are common in Russian business — making it difficult to understand in what bank account, and under whose name, the money is piling up.
“Russian businessmen hide behind several corporate layers,” said Alexander Nadmitov, a partner at law firm Nadmitov & Partners. “For example, a Cyprus company owns a Russian company, which is owned by another company, which is owned by someone else.”
But there is a legal framework for disclosure, and if prosecutors have a court order, a company has to reveal its ownership structure, even if it is domiciled abroad.
Just because ownership is exercised through foreign-registered companies does not automatically mean that its ultimate beneficiaries are non-Russian citizens.
The Audit Chamber corroborated the statement of the General Procurator’s Office on Tuesday, noting that 322 pieces of property at Domodedovo were owned by the Cyprus-registered company Hacienda Investments. A Domodedovo spokesperson confirmed these facts, but said again that there was nothing illegal about it.
The idea that the administrative company of Domodedovo must not be owned by a foreign company “has never been the subject of legislative restrictions,” Yekimovsky said.
He added that the runways of Domodedovo — which might be required by the Emergency Situations Ministry or the military in a national emergency — are leased by Domodedovo from the state.
The General Prosecutor’s Office’s statement, however, also suggested that the impenetrable holding structure behind Domodedovo Airport could contravene Russian national security.
“Considering the strategic significance of Domodedovo Airport for guaranteeing the country’s defense and the safety of the state, the current situation is unacceptable,” it said.
Though Domodedovo’s management does not fall under the list of industries or activities that are defined by law as strategic state assets, this does not necessarily make the airport invulnerable.
Russian search engine Yandex, which is domiciled in the Netherlands and on the verge of an initial public offering, warned investors this week about the risk of takeover by oligarchs and all the negative consequences that would entail.
Medvedev has spoken out about the desirability of having a national search engine.
Domodedovo fought off what was widely understood as an attempt at nationalization in 2008 and hired JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley last month to manage an IPO scheduled for 2011.
Yekimovsky said the General Prosecutor’s Office’s announcement should also be seen against the background of recent moves to consolidate Moscow’s airports under one management company.
At present, only Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo are under consideration for the amalgamation, which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in March would create “significant synergies.”
More than 22 million passengers passed through Domodedovo in 2010. The airport is served by 77 airlines.
Although the statement by the Prosecutor General’s Office singled out Domodedovo, in fact there are many large Russian-interest companies in whom foreign-registered, offshore companies have stakes.
Gunvor, the secretive energy trading firm through which large quantities of Russian oil flows to international buyers, is registered in Geneva.
The country’s biggest oil company, state-owned Rosneft, has offshore companies among its shareholders, and the country’s third biggest oil company, TNK-BP, is held by a Cyprus-registered company. Telecoms giant VimpelCom is registered in the Netherlands.
One reason why Russian businessmen are so keen to own companies through foreign registered entities is political and economic instability within Russia.
“The use of non-Russian companies for doing business in Russia is caused primarily by the high level of criminal captures of Russian companies by raiders,” said Natalya Morozova, a managing partner at Vinson & Elkins law firm in Moscow.
Nadmitov, however, said the main driver was tax avoidance.
A Cyprus shareholder pays a 5 percent dividend tax, instead of 9 in Russia, because of a bilateral tax regime between Cyprus and Russia, he added.
Vsevolod Miller, a lawyer at Ukov, Khrenov & Partners, saw the reason why Russian businessmen use foreign-registered companies as one element of a larger and very obvious picture.
“Why do people register and hold most of their money abroad, send their children to London and buy homes in the south of France?” he asked rhetorically.


TITLE: Rosneft Gets Final Say In $16Bln BP Tie-Up
AUTHOR: By Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Rosneft finds itself in a peculiar position this week after an international arbitration tribunal decided to give it the last word on a $16 billion tie-up — not with BP as it had hoped but rather with TNK-BP, a smaller rival that it has expressedly not wanted to work with.
The tribunal ruled Friday that TNK-BP must take BP’s place in the deal and that, if this happens, a share swap through which BP would exchange 5 percent of its equity for a 10 percent stake in Rosneft can go ahead.
Several options are now open to Rosneft, and hard bargaining promises to go on behind the scenes in the run-up to a May 16 deadline for the deal’s conclusion.
“The ball’s in Rosneft’s court,” said Valery Nesterov, an oil and gas analyst at Troika Dialog.
A Rosneft spokesman declined to comment Monday, citing the public holiday.
The ruling ends nearly four months of legal wrangling initiated by BP’s oligarch partners in the TNK-BP 50-50 joint venture who feared marginalization by BP’s Arctic exploration tie-up with Rosneft.
Alfa, Access and Renova Group, or AAR, which represents the interests of oligarchs Mikhail Fridman, Len Blavatnik and Viktor Vekselberg, successfully argued to the London-based arbitration tribunal operating under Swedish law that a BP deal with Rosneft that excluded TNK-BP would prove detrimental to TNK-BP’s long-term prospects.
AAR chief executive Stan Polovets welcomed the tribunal’s decision. “We see the Arctic transaction with Rosneft as a great opportunity for TNK-BP and for Russia which we would like to succeed,” he said in a statement Friday.
But Rosneft has repeatedly expressed an unwillingness to enter any alliance with TNK-BP. In a statement released March 11, the company said, “TNK-BP was never considered as a potential participant in the alliance because of the absence of the necessary competencies.”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin have both expressed surprise by AAR’s legal drive to leverage TNK-BP’s inclusion into the deal.
The tribunal also placed new conditions on the share swap. The ruling stipulates that any shares exchanged must be “held for investment purposes only … with voting rights exercised by independent trustees,” according to a joint statement released by BP and AAR.
In addition, neither company would be permitted representatives on the other’s board.
Sechin, the former chairman of Rosneft’s board of directors, said in February that he would like Rosneft to gain a seat on BP’s board as a result of the equity exchange.
One outcome now is that Rosneft decides that the original agreement has been watered down too much and allows it to collapse. But this is unlikely, UralSib chief strategist Chris Weafer said in a research note.
The deal “is too important for Russia’s strategic energy development plan and for Rosneft’s ambitious future development as a global oil player,” Weafer said.
Another option is that AAR could be bought out. The group rarely misses an opportunity to emphasize TNK-BP’s profitability, and Polovets described TNK-BP on Friday as a “fantastic business with a bright future.”
The Financial Times reported last month that AAR rejected a $27 billion offer for its half of TNK-BP. Unconfirmed media reports have suggested that AAR might be demanding as much as $40 billion to walk away.
In a third scenario, Rosneft might accept the ruling of the arbitration tribunal as it stands. The share swap was always the most significant part of the deal for Rosneft, and although TNK-BP might not be an ideal partner, the Arctic know-how, experts and technology will come from BP in any case, said Nesterov from Troika Dialog.
Such an outcome would be “more uncomfortable for BP than Rosneft,” he said.
BP chief executive Robert Dudley had hoped the Rosneft tie-up would revive his company’s fortunes after the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. But several of BP’s major shareholders have expressed unease over relinquishing the Arctic opportunity to TNK-BP and proceeding solely with the share swap.

TITLE: $5.5Bln in Gax Taxes Envisioned
AUTHOR: By Anatoly Medetsky
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The Finance Ministry is looking to collect additional billions of dollars by raising taxes on the natural gas industry, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on May 5.
The ministry expects to reap an extra 150 billion rubles ($5.5 billion) if the gas production tax is increased — an idea that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin approved for consideration, Kudrin said.
He didn’t say when the measure might take effect.
Gazprom and Novatek are the largest payers of the tax, which has already gone up 61 percent this year, to 265 rubles a metric ton, after a long freeze. Under earlier plans, the rate was to climb on par with consumer prices next year, or about 6 percent.
Kudrin didn’t say Wednesday how much the tax rate would have to increase to generate the additional revenue. His ministry said in March that it sought a doubling.
An expected 51.2 billion rubles more will flow into the budget thanks to this year’s increase, the Finance Ministry’s tax and customs policy department chief Ilya Trunin has said.
The government refrained from raising the gas production tax over most of the previous decade in a move that helped state-controlled Gazprom boost its investment. Now that budget deficits replaced surpluses, the industry lost its immunity from fiscal pressure.
The prospect of a higher tax burden came as a Gazprom-led international consortium completed laying the Nord Stream pipeline last Thursday. 

TITLE: Foreign Real Estate Gains Popularity
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russians buying real estate abroad tend to purchase property in Europe for investment purposes and are seeing up to 12 percent annual returns, a real estate agency said last week.
The most frequently targeted countries include Britain, Austria, France, Switzerland and Germany, said Igor Indriksons, head of the international investments department at IntermarkSavills.
Buyers are attracted to these countries because of their stability and low level of risk, he said in a telephone interview, adding that such locations also provide good investment returns for those renting out their properties.
According to Indriksons, investing in real estate in Europe is much more profitable than in Russia, because the annual returns on rentals in the most popular countries are 5 percent to 12 percent compared with 3.5 percent to 4 percent in Moscow.
Meanwhile, the behavior of Russian buyers, who previously chose overseas properties based on their personal preferences, has begun to change. More people are now selecting a real estate based on its ability to bring rental revenue.
“Russians were trying to combine incompatible things at first — a good investment and a convenient home for themselves,” Indriksons said.
He added that many buyers are entrepreneurs who started their own businesses in the middle of 1990s and began to actively buy property overseas only six years ago, because it took them about 10 years to build up their fortunes.
“The importance of the property’s investment attractiveness for Russians has been increasing for the third year in a row,” said Stanislav Zingel, president of international real estate agency Gordon Rock.
About 25 percent of those purchasing property abroad are doing it with the goal of turning a profit through rental, he said in e-mailed comments, adding that the global economic crisis provided a good lesson in investment literacy for domestic buyers.
Investing in property abroad is profitable because banks in countries where it is being purchased offer favorable mortgage terms, with rates much lower than in Russia.
France, Britain, Germany and Austria offered the most affordable mortgage loans last year, according to Gordon Rock and international mortgage broker Lowell Finance, which compared mortgage conditions in the 20 countries favored by Russian citizens.
“The mortgage affordability in these countries is a result of the economic strength and stability of these real estate markets, which came through the global financial crisis almost without losses,” the companies said in a joint statement in March.
Russians can obtain a mortgage abroad using the property they buy as collateral. Another requirement of most foreign banks is that monthly payments do not exceed one-third of the borrower’s monthly income in order to ensure repayment of the loan even if the borrower’s income declines.
According to Gordon Rock, France offers the most favorable conditions for mortgage loans. Borrowers can get a loan of up to 80 percent of the property’s price with the fixed and non-fixed mortgage rates staying at 2.9 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively.
These are the lowest mortgage rates in France since World War II, Zingel said.
Among other countries offering favorable mortgage terms are Britain — with a fixed mortgage rate of 3.2 percent — Germany with 3.3 percent and Austria with 3.4 percent.
That compares with the rate of almost 13 percent for dollar loans in Russia.
Despite the surge in interest from buyers considering real estate for investment, half of the realtors’ clients buy housing for vacation purposes Zingel said, adding that such real estate includes properties near the sea and ski resorts.
Bulgaria continues to top the list of countries favored by Russians buying for vacation purposes.
Other popular countries in this segment are Germany, Montenegro, Spain and the United States.
Russians also demonstrate a strong interest in properties in Cyprus, with the number of requests at the beginning of the year more than doubling from early 2010, Zingel said, citing local developers.
He also said Egypt has disappeared from the list of Russians’ preferences due to the unrest earlier this year.

TITLE: Putin Picks Caucasus Projects
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — The government has selected 30 investment projects worth 145 billion rubles ($5.3 billion) in agriculture, tourism and information technology as part of an ambitious program to develop the North Caucasus through 2025, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last week.
A total of 50 billion rubles in state guarantees will be provided this year to support the investment projects in the restive region, Putin said at a government meeting in Yessentuki in the Stavropol region on May 4.
The funds, which will be provided in line with a government decree signed Wednesday, are aimed at lowering the risks for investors taking loans for their projects and stimulating business activity in the region, Putin said.
He also called for federal ministries to advise investors on developing projects to take full advantage of the state guarantees, noting that investors in some parts of the North Caucasus, including Chechnya, face difficulties obtaining the guarantees.
“The Finance Ministry says projects aren’t always carried out properly,” Putin said. “You know what? You can say anything. If they aren’t carried out properly, help them.”
He said he also was counting on assistance from Vneshekonombank, which will set up a branch in the region, and the North Caucasus Development Corporation, the state agency that will oversee the 30 investment projects.
The agency also recently chose five “most promising” projects valued at 62 billion rubles and will provide 7 billion rubles of those funds, Putin said. The five projects are a resort in the Stavropol region town of Mineralnye Vody, chemical production in the Stavropol region, an ore deposit in Dagestan, and mountain resorts in Chechnya and Karachayevo-Cherkessiya.
Putin and other ministers did not offer details about the 30 projects approved Wednesday. But Regional Development Minister Viktor Basargin said they were in agriculture, construction, tourism, manufacturing and IT and their implementation would likely start in the second half of this year.
He said they are part of 370 projects approved by his ministry and valued at 1.3 trillion rubles.
The North Caucasus development program was approved in September and involves creating 400,000 new jobs and improving the investment climate in the region to attract investments to sectors like agriculture, energy, construction and tourism.
A total of 337 billion rubles will be set aside in the federal budget to develop the North Caucasus, Basargin said at Wednesday’s meeting, adding that 202 billion rubles woud be provided over the next two years.
Meanwhile, analysts said that providing such a windfall of cash to the North Caucasus would guarantee support for the Kremlin in the region.


TITLE: Would the Real Medvedev Please Stand Up?
AUTHOR: By Andrew Wood
TEXT: Western analysts assume that a second presidency for Dmitry Medvedev would offer a markedly different and more liberal perspective for Russia from what could be expected if Prime Minister Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin. But few Russian observers are confident of this.
Perhaps cynicism is ingrained in Russians, while hope is natural to Western well-wishers. That Western hope may be bolstered by the clear need for Russia to change direction if it is to realize its promise. Medvedev has articulated that general proposition well.
Although Putin has also spoken of diversification and development, it is often assumed by Western commentators that Putin has frustrated Medvedev’s efforts to move toward a more liberal approach. Take, for example, Putin’s April 20 address to the State Duma in which he emphasized the role of the state and the need to preserve stability over the next decade.
There are, however, questions that have to be asked before concluding that Medvedev would in reality pursue radical change if he were to stay on as president. Has he been consistent? Has he put the general interest of his country before the particular interests of the ruling elite? And if the answer to these and similar questions is “not yet,” then what would change after Medvedev’s victory in 2012 that would turn him into a different person?
Apply these sorts of questions to Putin, and the contrasting answers for Medvedev write themselves. Putin’s policies may not be what everyone would wish, and his understanding of the interests of his country may be disputable, but his ability to act as a leader is not to date in doubt. Medvedev has for some years said things that liberal-minded people in the West and in Russia too have welcomed. But little concrete action has followed. That has disillusioned Medvedev’s potential sympathizers in Russia.
He has also made a number of statements, usually passed over in embarrassed silence by Western analysts or justified by a perceived need for him to protect himself against domestic critics, that run counter to his liberal image. His language about the North Caucasus has been as crude as Putin’s, if less vivid, and he has had no fresh ideas as to how to cope with its dangers.
He has threatened the West with a new arms race, possibly even thinking that practicable. He has ramped up the Kurils/Northern Territories issue to no purpose but to show himself determined to stand up to a scarcely threatening Japan. He was a major figure in the 2008 campaign against Georgia and spoke out against Ukraine under former President Viktor Yushchenko. His language about the recent unrest in Egypt was so extreme that the Russian media reportedly cut him off as he was urging Mubarak to shed the blood of thousands, later quoting him as saying that “they” (probably the United States) were preparing a similarly malign scenario for Russia.
Medvedev has regularly promised action against corruption and professed determination to pursue notorious criminal cases. The results have been negligible. He has fired a number of officials and second rank political figures — with former Mayor Yury Luzhkov as his most prominent victim, but a man also in Putin’s sights and one whose time had come. He has been a persistent critic of the state corporations, and after three years in the presidency has acted against the direct role of senior members of the Russian political establishment in state-owned or dominated enterprises. But the record of concrete achievement in pursuit of economic reform, let alone the political adjustment needed to advance it, has been notably thin.
Medvedev would clearly like a second term as president. There are quite a few Russians who would prefer him to Putin and who would hope to promote change through him after 2012. But his direct following is limited and so far includes few prepared to stick their necks out for him. Medvedev has not tried very hard to be much more than Putin’s willing, if occasionally resentful, partner.
The changes the president has himself backed are restricted and do not imply a willingness on his part to confront the present ruling system or its principal groupings. It is arguable that his remarks on the need for reform and the dangers of stagnation have had an enlivening effect on the public, and that this will have consequences over the next few months. It is arguable, too, that if he stays on as president and is freed after 2012 from Putin’s dominance, his inadequacies as well as his proclaimed purposes will feed useful flexibility and constructive societal evolution. It would be good to hope for that.
But if the present rules of Russian politics remain essentially unchanged after the 2011-12 electoral cycle, it would be rash to count on a benign outcome. Stagnation, as Medvedev has termed it, would have its risks. Structural change would be tough, disruptive and unwelcome to many. The record so far is insufficient to show whether Medvedev is up to the job of leading a country with Russia’s emerging problems. Are the Russians right to be skeptical, or are those Western analysts right who see him as a determined harbinger of the next and hopeful era of change in Russia?

Andrew Wood, British ambassador to Russia between 1995 and 2000, is an associate fellow of Chatham House.

TITLE: A Bogus Focus on Hocus-Pocus
AUTHOR: By Galina Stolyarova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: There were three women waiting in line, differing widely in age. Although they were surrounded by shoppers, the place where they were waiting wasn’t dispensing medicines, food, or fashion items.
 They were each waiting for a session with a fortune teller who works from a consulting room in a large shopping mall in the center of St. Petersburg.
One of the women gushed with praise when I asked her if the fortune teller was any good.
“This is my second visit to Olga,” she said. “I didn’t even have to tell her my story. She just seemed to know everything. Now I feel I’m on the right track to return to normal life.”
Her situation was not unusual. Her husband had left her for someone younger, and the woman, who’d been a housewife for more than 10 years, had been left on her own, with no man in her life, no job, and not much money.  
The desperate divorcee recounted that before she found Olga the fortune teller, who charges 1,000 rubles ($37) per hour, she had paid a staggering 70,000 rubles to a magician who had promised to make her husband return to her. No prizes for guessing whether he succeeded.   
So what had Olga the fortune teller done for her fee? It turned out she had merely told the woman that she would soon meet another man and that she should seek counseling to cope with her unhappiness.
Olga is one of more than 800,000 fortune tellers, healers, and magic practitioners, who, according to state statistics, are officially registered in Russia. The numbers also include shamans — basically witch doctors, who are especially common in Siberia.
Now this industry has become the target of the State Duma. In a new crusade, deputies are expected to approve, in the next few weeks, the second hearing of a bill that bans advertising of such services.
One of the bill’s most enthusiastic supporters is Yevgeny Fyodorov, head of the Duma committee for economic policy and entrepreneurship.
“I think it’s necessary to restrict such advertisements because the victims of these swindlers now amount to many thousands,” Fyodorov said. “People contact these so-called magicians in frustrating situations only to lose what is often the only money they have left.  
“This is most cynical and it has to be stopped. The quacks promise to solve all your problems, from bringing back your lost love, to treating cancer, to making your fortune. But what they really do is paint a picture of a rosy future for clients who are so desperate they’ll believe anything.”
As it happens, the bill to clamp down on tricksters of all kinds coincides with a campaign by the Ministry of Health to tackle depression and mental health disorders. There has been a vast increase in these illnesses since the downfall of the U.S.S.R. 
The Health Ministry claims that, while more than 80 percent of Russians will at some stage need treatment for a mental health disorder, only 3 percent seek counseling.
So why do so many people in Russia choose a shaman or some other kind of quack over a psychologist or a medical doctor? It hardly seems connected with advertising, since there is no shortage of ads for professional counseling services.
It seems more likely that people who opt for the quacks and tricksters are utterly desperate. A visit to a fortune teller is a form of escapism, an attempt to enter an alternative reality.
In this respect, the flight to dodgy practitioners resembles drug addiction. But there is also a harsh reality about conventional medicine that drives them to desperate measures. They know that to obtain proper medical treatment in Russia you will often be asked to pay a hefty bribe, and that may be well beyond your means.
Although each fortune teller, faith healer, or shaman has his or her own list of services and prices, they are all essentially selling the same thing: hope. This hope is offered to clients in the form of a new man, a vast inheritance, a plum new job, or a successful medical treatment.
These prophecies, unlike counseling, are very popular in Russia. In one nationwide survey, more than 20 percent of people admitted having used the services of a fortune teller, shaman or “magic practitioner.”
Much of the despair that drives Russians into the arms of shady operators surely comes from an awareness that they live in a very corrupt state, where, in a critical situation, if you do not have the right connections, you are playing roulette. Of course if you are already suicidal it may be Russian roulette.
“I lost my job, and then my husband died, and then I spent almost half a year looking for a job without getting any response at all to my CV,” said Marina, who had gone to a fortune teller in a situation where a Western European would surely be more likely to seek counseling.
“I don’t know if I actually do believe in all this mystery and magic but in my real life I had nothing to hold on to,” Marina told me. “All my efforts were in vain, and nothing brought results, however hard I tried. I felt like I was drowning, and in having my fortune told I was clutching at a straw that I was hoping would save me.”
The experience of Olga, the fortune teller, suggests the crackdown planned by the Duma may not have much effect. She says that she doesn’t even need to advertise, as word of mouth brings her all the clients she needs.   
So the advertising ban being planned by the state deputies may have no more effect than President Dmitry Medvedev’s recent proposal to put drug addicts in prison. For both “solutions” fail to treat the causes of these two forms of escapism. Causes that are largely rooted in the ugly system of social injustice that exists in the country and that often drives the victims to go shopping for hope.

A full version of this commentary is available at Transitions Online, an award-winning analytical online magazine covering Eastern Europe and CIS countries, at www.tol.org.

TITLE: SKIF turns fifteen
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Legendary New York noise pioneers Swans will headline SKIF 15 — the 15th Sergei Kuryokhin International Festival — an annual festival of all kinds of off-beat music that kicks off this week.
Dedicated to the late local avant-garde rock and jazz pianist, SKIF has always brought some interesting and challenging international artists to the city, but this year’s lineup is perhaps even more stimulating than usual.
Formed by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Michael Gira in 1982, Swans emerged from the ashes of New York’s avant-rock No Wave scene and became one of the most influential acts of the 1980s, alongside artists such as Lydia Lunch and Sonic Youth. 
Gira (pronounced jhee-RAH) disbanded Swans in 1997 and continued with Angels of Light and solo, but reformed the band in January 2010 and released “My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky” — Swans’ first studio recording in 14 years — later that year. 
Gira, now 57, once described Swans’ concerts as both “soul-uplifting and body-destroying”. The musician came to St. Petersburg in 2004 and performed a solo set of dark folk ballads, singing and playing guitar at the now-defunct Red Club, but Swans’ SKIF set will be the band’s first appearance in the city.
Dutch avant-rock band The Ex was one of the first Western alternative acts to come to St. Petersburg as early as in the late 1980s, when the city was still called Leningrad. Its underground concert at the Leningrad Rock Club’s basement room remains an iconic event in which the Russian rock public and musicians, then still locked within the borders of the Soviet Union, were exposed to the energy and experimentalism of a truly innovative band, whose highlights include brilliant recordings with the late cello player Tom Cora.
The Ex returned to the city to perform at SKIF in 2006, but this year’s festival will see The Ex’s new incarnation. Its singer and co-founder G. W. Sok quit in 2009 after 30 years with the band to be replaced by singer and guitarist Arnold de Boer. 
De Boer is a familiar sight on the local avant-garde scene; he performed with his previous band Zea at both Dutch Punch and SKIF in 2005 and 2006, respectively.
De Boer’s voice, guitar and samples can be heard on The Ex’s most recent album “Catch My Shoe,” which was released last September.
Artists who are brand new to St. Petersburg audiences include Las Vegas-based mystical singer and yoga teacher Gonjasufi. Known as a rapper named Sumach Ecks, who has been active on the hip-hop scene since the early 1990s, he reinvented himself as Gonjasufi and released his debut album as such, called “A Sufi and a Killer,” in March last year.
American film score legend Alan Howarth, who composed soundtracks for almost 40 films and is most famous for his work with horror director John Carpenter (including every “Halloween” movie), will come with French electro-pop duo Zombie Zombie to perform works from Carpenter movies.
The band, which comprises Etienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman, was formed under the influence of Krautrock and horror soundtracks and is known for its penchant for vintage synthesizers and a Theremin. They paid homage to Carpenter on last year’s album, called “Zombie Zombie Plays John Carpenter,” which features the theme tunes from “Assault On Precinct 13,” “Halloween” and “The Thing” as well as pieces from “Escape From New York” and “Escape From L.A.” soundtracks. 
Other international acts include the Arnold Dreyblatt Ensemble, led by the New York-born, Berlin-based composer and visual artist; Norway’s “extreme” audio-visual project Killl; and British 12-string guitarist James Blackshaw.
Kuryokhin was active on the local scene from the 1970s, first as a jazz and rock pianist and keyboard player, then as a film composer. He could be seen playing with Akvarium and at avant-garde jazz performances. 
From the mid-1980s, he led Pop Mekhanika, a band with no permanent lineup whose large-scale happening-like performances featured brass bands, string ensembles, ballerinas and animals. He died of a rare heart decease at the age of 42 in 1996.
The festival dedicated to his memory was launched in January 1997 by Boris Rayskin, a cello player who had earlier emigrated from St. Petersburg to New York. 
Rayskin, who had played with Kuryokhin in Pop Mekhanika, had the idea of bringing musicians from diverse music fields together.
The very first event, which was called SKIIF (spelled with two ‘i’s), or the Sergei Kuryokhin International Interdisciplinary Festival, took place at a number of New York venues such as The Knitting Factory, Cooler and the Bitter End, lasted 11 days and featured Cecil Taylor, David Moss and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. 
The second event in March 1998 was held to mark Rayskin’s sudden death, after which the festival was moved to St. Petersburg, where the third event was held in October that same year. Since then, the festival has been held in the city annually.

All events are held at the Sergei Kuryokhin Modern Art Center, <i>93 Sredny Prospekt, Vasilyevsky Island. M.: Vasileostrovskaya / Primorskaya. Tel: 322 4223.</i>

TITLE: Poetry on the stage
AUTHOR: By Larisa Doctorow
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: A performance about the life of Russia’s best-loved poetess is the only new opera to be commissioned by the Paris Opera (Bastille) for the 2010-2011 season. 
Nicolas Joel, the theater’s director, explained that he had been looking for a subject and wanted to stage an opera set in modern times, in which war and suffering engulf an artist, yet where, in spite of all this, the creative spirit survives. 
From his years as director of the Toulouse opera house, Joel has closely collaborated with the librettist Christophe Ghristi, and he spoke to him about his quest. The librettist has a passion for Russian poetry, and suggested the life of the persecuted Soviet poetess Anna Akhmatova as a subject. Her biography had everything the director was looking for: Life under an oppressive regime, a fighting spirit that helped her to remain a poet and preserve her talent, war with all its deprivations, and lastly, the torment of the political arrests of her son and her husband. Ghristi was invited to write the libretto. 
The opera’s composer, 33-year-old Bruno Mantovani, is considered by many to be the most outstanding French composer of his generation. In 2010, Mantovani was appointed director of the Paris Conservatory. He is the author of many orchestral and instrumental pieces, one opera and a ballet, “Siddhartha,” which was staged by the Paris Opera last season.
The opera “Anna Akhmatova” premiered at the Bastille on March 28.
Ghristi’s libretto is based on the memoirs of Lydia Chukovskaya, a close friend of Akhmatova, and contains poems by the poetess and by Alexander Pushkin, whom Akhmatova revered.
Questions were invariably posed about the possible involvement of Russian singers, translators or memoirists in the production, but Joel, who staged the opera himself, made it clear that this is a French opera, and the singers are French. The opera is performed entirely in French using translations of Akhmatova’s poems. 
One of the problems the director faced in attracting audiences was that many French people had never heard of the Russian poetess and her difficult life. The stage director identified two moments in the life of Akhmatova that bring her closer to France — to Paris, to be precise. In 1910 and 1911, the poetess traveled to the French capital, where she met and befriended Amadeo Modigliani. The painter made about 10 drawings of Akhmatova, some of which she kept with her for the rest of her life.
Modigliani’s sketches are used in the production as major stage props. The opera opens with Akhmatova’s words — a monologue in which she reminiscences about Paris and Modigliani. Spectators become involved with her character and find out about this small but strong tie to Paris. The large drawings consist of black lines on enormous white panels that move around the stage. They serve as comfort for the poetess; they are a reminder of normal life. They also serve as hiding places for KGB agents when they wait for an opportunity to enter her apartment and take away either her husband, her son or both. 
The show could be divided into two parts. In the first part, the creators have tried to communicate the oppressive atmosphere of Russia from the 1930s to ’50s ,with universal fear, poverty, exile, executions and the labor camps. To strengthen the point, film footage is projected showing the Gulag system, the lonely, nameless graves concealed among birch trees, and the prisoners themselves — a sad picture of misery and grief. On stage, Akhmatova is in a crowd of women waiting outside the prison gates, hoping to find out something about the fate of her son. Lydia Chukovskaya, one of the main protagonists, recites lines from Akhmatova’s celebrated “Poem Without a Hero.”
The second part has more action. In this part, the authors have compressed the most dramatic events in the country’s 20th-century history and in the life of the heroine: World War II, the Siege of Leningrad, bombing, evacuation and her return to a destroyed city. 
Arrests and persecution form a constant theme throughout the opera. 
Gradually, the main conflict emerges. This is between Akhmatova and her son Lev. 
After Stalin’s death, along with many others, Lev is released from the camps. Upon his return, he accuses his mother of doing nothing to secure his freedom. It is doubtful that she could in fact have obtained a pardon for Lev, whose father was executed as an “enemy of the people” and whose mother had fallen into disgrace with the regime. But some of the his accusations remain unresolved, such as why Akhmatova did not write letters to him, sending only rare postcards, and why she did not send him food parcels. After a shower of accusations, Lev leaves his mother, saying he will never come back. She does not stir. Her last words are: “Poets should not have children.”
The composer has only recently ventured into the world of opera, and has not attempted any vocal ensembles in “Anna Akhmatova.” Instead, the score is filled with monologues and recitatives. 
Another curious feature is that the opera’s overture, in which the lines of conflict and the melodies that characterize each character are usually first heard, is placed at the very end. After the last words of the heroine, the orchestra — a small chamber ensemble — embarks on a 20-minute musical interlude for which the composer has saved the most interesting music. The only clear musical reminder of Russia is the inclusion of an accordion in the orchestra. 
Mantovani has said that his intention was to deliberately avoid any association with the music of the leading Russian composer of Akhmatova’s time — Dmitry Shostakovich — and to create a new musical world. 

TITLE: CHERNOV’S CHOICE
AUTHOR: By Sergey Chernov
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: German hard rock band Scorpions will come to perform its last concert in St. Petersburg this week. If the band — which is now on its Farewell Tour — is not lying, this is good news. 
Scorpions is one of the most hideous bands ever, although its possible departure will probably leave some Russians with somewhat mixed feelings.
It is hard to believe now, but the band’s web site claims that Scorpions played ten straight sold-out concerts at the SKK stadium in Leningrad, as St. Petersburg was then known, to a total audience of 350,000. 
Apart from the official shows, which drew a lot of Western press and television crews, they gave an unannounced two-song gig at the Rock Club’s “Red Corner” on Ulitsa Rubinshteina — the small underground room previously used for the communist indoctrination of local residents. 
In fact, Scorpions sent the public into shock with its professionalism — they borrowed the instruments from the local musicians who played before them and after some tuning sounded like nobody in that room ever had before. 
Scorpions performed “Blackout” and “The Zoo,” after which the band and its bodyguards promptly jumped into a car and raced out of the Rock Club’s closed courtyard as if they were afraid of getting mobbed (which was a ridiculous idea; the Rock Club crowd did not mob anybody).
Scorpions came to Moscow the following year, in 1990 wrote the perestroika anthem “Wind of Change” — a song so cheesy that it became one of their biggest international hits — and met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin in 1991.
The group also recorded a hack studio version of the song in what they pretended was Russian. In fact, only a few Russian words can be discerned in this otherwise meaningless, tenuously “Slavic”-sounding mess.
In December 2007, Scorpions made a shocking move: It headlined a televised concert for the 70th anniversary celebration of Russian state security services in the Kremlin. The hall was packed with KGB veterans and present-day FSB officers.
The FSB regards its birthday as Dec. 20, 1917, when the much-feared Soviet political police, the Cheka (short for Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage) was formed by Lenin’s decree. The Soviet state security services have been responsible for innumerable crimes against Soviet and foreign citizens.
When the hardliners’ coup failed in August 1991, the removal of a monument to Cheka chair Felix Dzerzhinsky from near the KGB Headquarters in Moscow was seen as the beginning of a real democracy. Those hopes failed.
Scorpions have therefore really gone full circle — from celebrating freedom to singing to state security services officers in the Kremlin. It’s a trajectory that looks complete and, in a strange kind of way, beautiful. 
Scorpions will perform at Ice Palace on Thursday.

TITLE: <i>the word’s worth</i> Leaving Work, Theater and the U.S.S.R.
AUTHOR: By Michele A. Berdy
TEXT: Âûõîä: exit, withdrawal, outing, secession, entrance, appearance, etc.

As the tanks and troops rehearsing for the Victory Day parade in Moscow rattled my windows, created traffic jams of diverted cars in my courtyard and terrified my dog, I wondered why I was in Moscow and not out at the dacha. Oh, right — I guess rain, hail and single-digit temperatures might have had something to do with it. But all the same, the notion of exodus is very appealing, which brings us to âûõîä (exit, leaving, outing), the more interesting word in the âõîä-âûõîä (entrance-exit) pair.
Of course, “interesting” is a euphemism for “confusing.” Âûõîä and its adjective âûõîäíîé cover a huge swath of lexical territory that includes notions of leaving, entering and even celebrating.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. Âûõîä is any kind of exit, like ýâàêóàöèîííûé (evacuation) or çàïàñíîé (emergency exit, escape route, back door). It also describes the act of leaving or going out. Sometimes in English this is expressed as withdrawing: Ñåãîäíÿ îòìå÷àëñÿ âûõîä ñîâåòñêèõ âîéñê èç Àôãàíèñòàíà (The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan was commemorated today).
In prisons, guards might shout: Íà âûõîä ñ âåùàìè! (Pack it up and move it out!; literally, “to the exit with [your] things.”) Today, this phrase is used jokingly when, say, the tour operator wants travelers packed and at the bus to the airport. This is amusing — in a dark sort of way — at 4 a.m. in Antalya, but I guess you have to be there to get the joke.
Âûõîä can refer to an outing: Ýòî ïåðâûé âûõîä ïîñëå åãî áîëåçíè (This is the first outing after his illness). Ðîññèéñêèå êîñìîíàâòû óñïåøíî çàâåðøèëè âûõîä â êîñìîñ (The Russian cosmonauts successfully carried out a space walk).
Or it can refer to quitting an organization or state: Ðåæèññåð ïîäïèñàë ïèñüìî î âûõîäå èç Ñîþçà êèíåìàòîãðàôèñòîâ (The director signed a letter resigning from the Filmmakers’ Union). Ñîâåòñêàÿ êîíñòèòóöèÿ íå ïðåäóñìàòðèâàëà ïðàâà ñâîáîäíîãî âûõîäà ðåñïóáëèê èç Ñîþçà (The Soviet Constitution didn’t include the right of republics to freely secede from the union).
But then, annoyingly, âûõîä can mean the opposite: an entrance, appearance or access to something. This only makes sense if you think of âûõîä as a form of coming out. For example, âûõîä âîéñê might not be their withdrawal, but rather their deployment or arrival, as in this headline: Íàïàäåíèå Ãåðìàíèè íà ÑÑÑÐ è âûõîä íåìåöêèõ âîéñê ê Ëåíèíãðàäó (Germany’s invasion of the U.S.S.R. and the advance of German forces towards Leningrad). Îí îòëîæèë âûõîä íà ðàáîòó (He put off going back to work). Âûõîä íà ñöåíó àêò¸ðà çðèòåëè âñòðåòèëè ñ îâàöèÿìè ñòîÿ (The audience gave a standing ovation when the actor made his entrance). Ñòðàíà íå èìåëà âûõîäà ê ìîðþ (The country was landlocked; literally, “had no access to the sea”).
In the world of books, âûõîä is the publication date: Èçäàòåëüñòâî îáúÿâèëî âûõîä êíèãè “Èíîïëàíåòíîå âòîðæåíèå. Áèòâà çà Ðîññèþ” (the publishing house announced the publication of “Alien Invasion: The Battle for Russia”). Weird, but possibly a good beach book.
More figuratively, âûõîä is a way out, usually from òóïèê (a dead end) or some bad ñèòóàöèÿ (situation). Ìû òâ¸ðäî óáåæäåíû, ÷òî èç ëþáîãî ñëîæíîãî ïîëîæåíèÿ åñòü âûõîä (We firmly believe that you can always find a solution to any complicated problem).
The adjective âûõîäíîé can modify a noun to mean some form of exit, like âûõîäíàÿ äâåðü (street door) or âûõîäíîå ïîñîáèå (severance pay). In reference to clothing, it’s “going out” duds — your party clothes. But âûõîäíîé is also a day off, that is, when you can “go out of” work. Âïåðåäè òðè äíÿ âûõîäíûõ (We’ve got three days off ahead of us).
To which I can only say: Æåëàþ ñ÷àñòëèâûõ âûõîäíûõ! (Have a nice weekend!)

Michele A. Berdy, a Moscow-based translator and interpreter, is author of “The Russian Word’s Worth” (Glas), a collection of her columns.

TITLE: A local take on world music
AUTHOR: By Natalya Sarakhanova
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: In-Temporalis, a musical duo founded four years ago in St. Petersburg who have attracted attention, praise and criticism from all over Russia and beyond for their innovative renditions of classics, will perform on May 18 in Smolny Cathedral. 
The musical project consists of two musicians: Polina Fradkina, who plays classical piano, and Yoel Gonzalez, who plays percussion. The pair of musical polyglots introduce audiences to music from various times and cultures, combining musical styles that may at first seem irreconcilable. In-Temporalis is spectacularly eclectic, mixing different musical genres and developing a new breed of musical performance. The duo not only introduces spectators to utterly original musical directions, but forces them to look afresh at modern music and contemporary attitudes to classical music.
In-Temporalis is generally defined as crossover — the ensemble combines popular classical music with diverse musical styles. Their music, according to Fradkina and Gonzalez, illustrates the difference in interpretations of world music, in which various European and Latin American musical traditions meet. European music focuses more on form, say the musicians, while African and Latin American music gives far more importance to the role of rhythm. In-Temporalis’s calling card is their ability to blend great compositions by Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Grieg, Prokofiev, Ravel, Rossini and others with Latin American and African rhythms. 
The musicians themselves embody the nature of crossover: Fradkina is a successful classical pianist who comes from a musical family in St. Petersburg, while Gonzalez is a native of Cuba who came to Russia almost 20 years ago.
The musicians were brought together, despite their different backgrounds, by the St. Petersburg music scene. Fradkina was, she says, always interested in avant-garde music, while Gonzalez was open to taking part in experimental projects. That was the impulse for their first jam session four years ago. 
The musicians say that they associate St. Petersburg with uniting cultures, and an acceptance of various genres and styles, independent of time and culture.
The starting premise of In-Temporalis is that classical works are not museum exhibits, but on the contrary, are ripe for experimentation by contemporary musicians. “Those who we call classic composers today were, in their time, pioneers who experimented with and crossed many boundaries,” said Fradkina, adding that she believes that the composers would have approved of In-Temporalis’ experiments. 
Many musical genres are appearing today: Crossover, world music, ethno music, new classic, to name but a few. There are contemporary music festivals held all over the world at which symphony orchestras and folk ensembles perform as equals. 
Fradkina and Gonzalez say that it is difficult for audiences to understand music from other cultures due to various musical traditions: For Latin Americans, it is rhythm that creates music and harmony. Europeans may not be able to distinguish between rhythms or even discern the music itself in African and Latin American musical schools.  
Outside of the partnership, the musicians both have active solo careers: Fradkina performs all over the world, and Gonzalez gives solo concerts and performs together with a whole host of Russian pop and jazz performers and ensembles. He has organized five jazz festivals in Russia, and gives master classes in a variety of folk percussion instruments.
In the near future, In-Temporalis’s plans include a tour of Russian cities, the release of a new disc, and recording of another. In the past, the ensemble has toured countries including Germany, Saudia Arabia, Armenia and Norway.
It could be said that the duo has taken on the mission of inculcating international musical tolerance. The ability to listen to and accept unfamiliar sounds and rhythms is a key principal of musical internationalism, and it is perhaps no coincidence that In-Temporalis was born in St. Petersburg — a city that since its creation has been a melting pot for different nationalities, religions and musical styles.

In-Temporalis will perform at 7 p.m. on May 18 at Smolny Cathedral, 3 Ploshchad Rastrelli. Tel: 314 2168.

TITLE: Prince Harry of Russia
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
TEXT: Last week, a former diplomat-turned-blogger unveiled his vision of how to save Russia: borrowing Prince Harry from Britain and crowning him tsar to rule over us. It was certainly more interesting than the endless ponderings on the future of the ruling tandem, and the British tabloid Daily Mail was rather keen on the idea.
Former diplomat Alexander Baunov has written some fairly undiplomatic pieces in his new role as an editor and blogger on Slon.ru. Last year he wrote a very funny article about St. Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko and her energetic management as a Russian ambassador in Athens, where she built a swimming pool and a tennis court and banned diplomats from taking their usual lunchtime snoozes that stretched until the end of the working day.
This week, as the world speculated over whether Prince Harry had been admiring the chief bridesmaid’s bottom, Baunov had more lofty thoughts and wrote a manifesto calling for Prince Harry to be crowned tsar of Russia. He also proposed that the prince should change his name to Igor — a fairly drastic measure, but then again, he might not like his Russian-accented moniker of “Prints Garry.”
Russia is short on royalist pageantry, Baunov complained, forcing viewers to accept a second-best elite of “flabby state deputies, singers who can’t sing and ‘graduates’ of the reality show ‘Dom-2.’”
Those slurs on showbiz royalty might not go down too well with Russia’s semi-official “king of pop”, Filipp Kirkorov, who takes his honorific title rather seriously. This week, he celebrated his 44th birthday with a giant cake reading “Happy Birthday, the King Philip” in broken English and a jewel-studded crown perched on his black curls. Unlike many royal receptions, though, the concert ended with a fight between security guards and audience members, Life News said.
Baunov’s idea proved surprisingly popular with an accompanying survey finding that almost 40 percent backed a constitutional monarchy in Russia. In Britain, the devotedly royal-watching tabloid Daily Mail gave it a big spread. It even found some Russian women swooning about Harry’s allure on the Internet. “Many girls in Russia would like to caress his ginger locks,” it quoted one woman, named Anna, as saying.
The royal wedding was all very well in its way, but sadly it could not hold a candle to the lavish nuptials of Russian ballerina Anastasia Volochkova — even if the couple later separated and her husband was reportedly lured away by the charms of a yoga instructor.
With her usual frankness, Volochkova called a spade a spade and said her wedding in 2007 to businessman Igor Vdovin — which included three different dresses and the bride landing in a hot-air balloon — was altogether a classier affair.
“The wedding cost 36 million [pounds] but I do not see any particular luxury,” she sniffed on Twitter, after watching live on a television talk show. “My wedding was less expensive but more refined, chic, interesting and unpredictable. I flew in on a hot-air balloon,” she boasted.
She was backed up by Newsweek’s Anna Nemtsova, who on Ekho Moskvy lamented the lack of spectacular weddings in Russia, saying she and her friends could only remember one: Volochkova’s.
On the day of the royal wedding, Volochkova also took part in filming Channel One’s compulsively watchable dating show “Let’s Get Married,” although she wrote on Twitter that she did not pick any of the potential husbands she was offered, describing them as “dodgy.”
Rather extraordinarily, she admitted on the show that despite the pomp and ceremony, she had never actually officially registered her marriage to Vdovin, Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.


TITLE: New Kid on the Block
AUTHOR: By Tobin Auber
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: The Admiralty end of Voznesensky Prospekt once looked as if it were gearing up to become the equivalent of London’s Brick Lane, with two Indian restaurants located next door to one another. Following prolonged, some might say perpetual, construction work, however, it is finally beginning to reveal itself as the city’s hotel center. There are the two veterans on the scene, the Angleterre and the Astoria, and a Four Seasons is scheduled to open in the vast House With the Lions in 2012, with the forest of scaffolding already beginning to come down. Rumor has it that the Four Seasons has been designed with premises for an incredible eight restaurants. 
It’s the new kid on the block, the W Hotel, which has already opened, that is a real shot across the bows of the city’s top hotels. At the risk of offending St. Petersburg’s hoteliers (and advertisers), the five-star end of the market in these parts is a fairly conservative realm where historical connections and long-established reputations predominate over innovation or a more modern sense of style. 
The W aims to change all that with a funkier, slicker, younger style – even before its mid-April opening it had created something of a buzz in the city with its staff hiring process, which glammed up the whole interviewing process into a Hollywood-style casting event for potential employees, and a swift glimpse at its unashamedly modern interiors is enough to let you know that it hasn’t been taking its design tips from the interiors of the neighboring Winter Palace. 
The hotel’s restaurant also differs in that the management has made a conscious effort to distinguish between the hotel and its eatery housed in the same building, even giving it a separate entrance — they are well aware that many travelers regard eating at their hotel’s restaurant as being strictly for the lazy or unadventurous, and they are keen to attract guests from across the city (and the neighboring hotels, no doubt). The new restaurant, miX in St. Petersburg, is also a first for Russia in another sense — a top flight “name” chef has finally opened a restaurant in the country. Among Alain Ducasse’s claims to fame are his having been the first chef ever to have three-Michelin-starred restaurants in three different countries at once, and being the only chef to have accrued 19 stars during the course of his career. 
Stepping in, you quickly forget you’re in St. Petersburg, although the interior by the Milan-based Antonio Citterio design house does claim to be “inspired by the jewel tones and layers of a Faberge Egg,” according to the publicity blurb. It’s warm and inviting, thanks to the dark, golden tones of the rough-hewn walnut boards, the dark brown leather of the custom benches and the chandeliers made from countless 24-carat gold chain links. The layout entirely ignores the original interior of the historic building, with the four zones within the restaurant linked by curving passageways and corridors that entirely avoid any right angles, and there is a large glass window looking on to the chefs beavering away in the kitchens. 
The menu, on initial examination, seems fairly limited, with just 20 to 30 humbly titled dishes, but appearances here are deceptive: A “soft-boiled farmhouse egg with Paris mushrooms and croutons” (600 rubles, $21.50), turned out to be a miniature masterpiece, complete with rich, perfectly cured bacon. The velvety pumpkin soup with ricotta gnocchi (500 rubles, $18), was another unexpected delight, the concoction perfectly creamed without being overly rich. The menu is divided into dishes that have been specially concocted by Alain Ducasse and his team using local ingredients, and a special “Alain Ducasse Classics” section, featuring some of the chef’s most memorable creations from his other restaurants (visitors would do well to order the seasonal vegetables and fruit prepared “in a Cookpot,” in which the ingredients have been chopped and arranged into a cream and brown-toned mosaic, for the whole table).
Our excellent waitress steered us in fluent English in the direction of the beef tournedos with foie gras and truffle and a perigueux sauce (1,500 rubles, $54). Like all the dishes served on our visit, the portion was small but perfectly formed. The meat, ordered medium rare, was incredibly tender, the foie gras and truffle effectively a rich sauce — another palpable hit. The young rabbit, served with pumpkin in a pastry casing, was equally tender, and just as packed with taste (1,200 rubles, $43).
And after all that, the desserts were by no means a disappointment — some of the best, absurdly light cheesecake this reviewer has tasted in the city (450 rubles, $16), a rum baba as served in Ducasse’s Monte-Carlo restaurant (for 500 rubles or $18, you can choose from a range of rums) and a “miX candy bar” (what you get when a 3-star Michelin chef gives his interpretation of a twix, for just 350 rubles, or $12.50). 
The portions are by no means huge, and the prices are by no means cheap, but if you’re looking for first-class dining in Petersburg, this new opening has just raised the bar.
<div class="divider">&nbsp;</div>
<h1>THE GUIDE</h1>

<b>Around the Admiralty</b>
The end of Voznesensky Prospekt, where the three radials converge at the Admiralty, is home to a small yet diverse hub of restaurants that only looks set to grow as more upscale hotels prepare to open their doors on and around St. Isaac’s Square.

<b>Tandoor</b>
 
Tandoor offers a comprehensive range of delicacies from the subcontinent in a pleasantly kitschy setting, with very friendly service. It’s not the cheapest, but it’s worth every kopeck. The business lunch and Thali sunshine special are highly recommended, and the vegetable samosas are to die for.
<i>2/10 Voznesensky Prospekt
Tel: 312 3886, 312 5310</i>

<b>Receptoria</b>
 
Receptoria is a corner of French rustic elegance opposite the Admiralty Gardens. The high expectations set by the inviting, sophisticated interior are surpassed. In contrast, the languid and arrogant service borders on the edge of being rude. The attached gourmet food boutique is not shy about its pricing.
<i>10 Admiralteisky Prospekt
Tel: 312 7967, 315 7544</i>

<b>Tandoori Nights</b>
 
From the street, Tandoori Nights looks a little vulgar with a large neon sign announcing its presence. Inside, however, the restaurant is far from vulgar. The service is thoroughly professional, and the excellent offerings on the menu reflect a number of Indian regional cuisines.
<i>4 Vosnesensky Prospekt
Tel: 312 8772</i> 

TITLE: Bureaucracy Puts the Brakes on Competitiveness
AUTHOR: By Olga Kuvshinova, 
Alexandra Kreknina 
and Bela Lyauv
PUBLISHER: Vedomosti
TEXT: MOSCOW — Food could cost 15 percent less, communications could go down by 10 percent, and real estate could be 25 to 30 percent cheaper.
The problem is bureaucracy and legalized corruption, government experts say.
A group analyzing the competitive environment of Russia’s economy, as part of an update to the overall national development strategy, has identified defective institutions that impede business activity and economic growth and are part of the cause of higher prices for goods and services.
An ineffective and corrupt bureaucracy has the greatest effect on the real estate sector: the construction of office buildings and stores and the establishment of farms and rental of land, according to a report issued by the European University in St. Petersburg.
Defective institutions are responsible for 25 to 30 percent of the price of housing and commercial real estate — in Moscow, they are responsible for up to 60 percent of those prices — as well as adding 15 percent to the prices of retail goods and 10 percent to the cost of communications.
In the real estate sector, a system has arisen to generate income completely legally through inspections and permits, said co-author of the report Vadim Volkov. Many government offices have supposedly private companies “in their pockets” that thrive on an informal monopoly over the provision of a variety of those documents.
Procedures involved in obtaining permits lead to a doubling of construction costs. Bribes to reduce administrative hurdles constitute 5 to 15 percent of the cost of a project, and unofficial payments to facilitate utilities hookups come to another 7 to 10 percent.
The State and Municipal Management Institute at the Higher School of Economics has calculated that the amount of “informal” payments in the construction of apartment buildings is on average seven times greater than the cost of official permits.
Officials have so much discretion that they do not have to break the law to generate corrupt income, said institute spokesman Sergei Plaksin. Informal payments are often made at the initiative of a business that has broken a rule, and the rules are written to encourage violation.
“If supervisory bodies were to follow the law in full, not a single building could ever make it to occupancy,” said Dmitry Potapenko, managing partner of Management Development Group, which owns the Gastronomchik and Prodeko chains.
They hold one hand out to businessmen, while the other is poised to slap them, said Gennady Lobanov of the business lobby Opora.
“The cost of permits from various authorities can come to between 30 percent and 60 percent of the cost of erecting a building, depending on the region and the complexity of the project,” Potapenko said. Permits can take years to get, as was the case with the IKEA shopping center in Samara, for example. The Swedish chain began construction in 2006 and still cannot get the necessary permits to open it. Instead of the planned investment of 4 billion rubles ($146 million), IKEA has been forced to spend twice that much on the project.
The markup on the purchase price of goods can be up to 25 percent of the final price, but the net profit is no more than 3 percent, Potapenko said.
Those are average figures for the sector, executive director of the Association of Retail Trading Companies Ilya Belonovsky agreed.
“Do you want communications? Fine. Here’s the price. You choose among a limited number of companies on the market. You want a sewer hookup? There is only one institute that will carry out the inspection,” the university’s report quotes the co-owner of a retail chain as saying.
“You don’t know how much it will cost to hook up to the water, the sewer; how much time it will take to get the permits. You don’t even know what year you will open your hotel in,” a hotel owner told the authors of the report.
Because of the high unpredictability and risks, the horizon for business planning does not exceed five years, so the businessmen’s desire to recoup their investment quickly also leads to higher prices.
The short return-on-investment period raises the price of goods by 10 percent, and high capital costs cause a 3 percent increase and added operational costs because of poor regulation add another 3 percent — that is, about 16 percent of the 25 to 30 percent retail markup, the experts conclude from calculations made at a chain of 25 superstores. If it were not for defective institutions, the markup would be only half of what it is now.


TITLE: Passion Drives an Emerging Art, Antiques Market
AUTHOR: By Irina Filatova 
and Howard Amos
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — Lawyer Mikhail Barshchevsky stands in front of a painting depicting a wooden peasant house buried among high snowdrifts.
“It’s beautiful,” Barshchevsky said, pointing to the canvas in a golden frame, harmonizing with the wall covered in dark-green fabric on which it is displayed.
The painting, called “A Winter Day” by early 20th-century Russian artist Ivan Choultse, was one of the thousands of items on display at the Russian Antique Salon, which was held this month in Moscow.
Barshchevsky said he wasn’t going to buy anything at the salon, which is one of the world’s biggest antiques fairs based on the number of dealers, and had come just because he loved art.
But increasing numbers of enthusiasts are being drawn to investment, interior decorating and a passion to collect beautiful things — the universal factors driving the worldwide antiques market.
The domestic market will grow significantly because wealthy Russians see their incomes increasing because of the economic recovery and are likely to buy more antique items, said Anatoly Borovkov, an expert with the International Confederation of Antique and Art Dealers, or ICAAD.
Russia is now home to 101 billionaires, nearly twice as many as a year ago, with 79 of them residing in Moscow — more than in any other city of the world, according to Forbes magazine.
Another factor that will boost domestic antiques sales is the growth of the real estate market, which is now recovering after the economic crisis, said Oleg Tairov, director of Belvedere Art Center.
International antique dealers are beginning to take notice, as evidenced by a visit last month by 12 members of LAPADA, Britain’s largest trade association for art and antiques dealers.
Amid the ornate stucco, gilding and wood paneling of the British ambassador’s residence across the river from the Kremlin, the LAPADA members showed off a few choice items to a champagne-lubricated crowd gathered by the U.K. Trade and Investment Department in Russia.
Drawn by the lure of wealthy Russian buyers — as well as the British taxpayer-funded trip to Moscow — the dealers ranged from veterans of the Russian market to novices.
Edward Collins, managing director of Hallidays, first did business in Russia selling paneled rooms 12 years ago. He has an agent based in Moscow.
He wants to sell more to Russians locally. “Why can I sell [antiques] to them in London but not here?” he asked.
The most expensive item on display at the gathering was a 19th-century cabinet with European cathedral facades, valued at $1.2 million. There were also representatives from a high-end billiard table-making firm and a luxury wallpaper manufacturer.
James Mills, a gallery manager at W.R. Harvey & Co. (Antiques) Ltd., which deals in English antique furniture, however, said his company had never had any links with Russia.
“This is very much a toe in the water for us,” he said, but Russia is a “new potential market.”
He added that, despite the boom in online antiques dealing, a presence on the ground in target countries was critical.
The Russian market for antiques, which is only 15 years old, is much smaller compared with the 250-year-old European market.
Russia has about 400 antiques galleries and salons compared with more than 2,000 of them in London, said Natalya Legotina, head of a Moscow design outfit, which helped organize LAPADA’s visit to the capital.
Antiques sales in Russia were estimated at $150 million in 2010, which accounts for no more than two percent of the global total, but experts said there is enormous potential for future growth.
The presence of the world’s biggest auction houses like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, which have local representative offices and are challenging homegrown giant Gelos, is a sign of the “high market potential,” LAPADA said in a statement.
There are several reasons why Russians buy antiques, and only a minority of collectors are hard-core completists — someone who attempts, sometimes obsessively, to collect an example of every item of a particular artist, manufacturer or type — or are ready to give huge sums for a piece of art, said Tairov, who is also an ICAAD member.
“This is an endangered breed. There are fewer and fewer such people. Only very rich people collect pieces of art. First because they love it and second because they hope to create their own museums,” he said in an interview.
Among the most famous Russian completists are head of Renova Group Viktor Vekselberg, who owns a collection of Faberge eggs that he bought in 2004 from the Forbes publishing family, and Alfa Bank president Pyotr Aven, who collects Russian art of the late 19th century.
According to Borovkov, dealers consider any item of cultural value created before the 1950s to be an antique.
Some buyers are driven by the desire to decorate a new house or apartment, Tairov said, adding that such clients buy about 20 to 30 items to fill a space.
There is also a growing number of buyers who consider art and antiques a good investment, preferring them to traditional equity.
“Pieces of art have one advantage compared with other investment tools. Shares turn into a pile of paper when their price falls. But if prices for art fall, you still have the item itself, and its price will grow sometime in the future,” Tairov said.
Antiques values were growing 20 percent annually before the economic crisis, but even today’s average growth of 10 percent to 12 percent is considered good, Tairov said.
He added that among the most lucrative investment options are Old Master paintings — canvases by Western European artists of the 14th to 17th centuries — paintings by impressionists, Russian art of the late 19th century and pieces of contemporary art.
Valery Babkin, owner of Modus Vivendi art gallery in Moscow, which focuses on Old Master paintings, also said paintings are a good investment.
“These paintings have an absolute value,” he told reporters at the Russian Antique Salon, adding that prices for such paintings are growing 50 percent annually.
Among other canvases that Babkin brought to the Russian Antique Salon was a painting by Dutch artist Ludolf Bakhuizen, which he said is worth $100,000.
A couple of years ago another canvas by the artist was sold at Sotheby’s for $2 million, Babkin said.
Other art styles have also demonstrated stable appreciation in recent years. Borovkov, whose gallery sells Russian avant-garde art, including books and paintings, is asking $10,000 for a painting by Soviet artist Dmitry Plavinsky, which was priced at 5 rubles in 1978.
Owners of local galleries expect a further surge of demand and prices for Russian antiques in the coming years, adding, however, that there are a number of problems hampering growth.
The legislation that regulates the transfer of items of cultural value across Russia’s borders needs serious amendments, Borovkov said, adding that such a change would allow dealers to sell Russian antiques abroad, which would boost the domestic market.
According to the current law, it’s forbidden to export items of cultural value that are more than 100 years old, items protected by the state and preserved in museums, and especially valuable items representing Russia’s cultural heritage, regardless of the period in which they were created.
Exporting other items of cultural value requires getting a certificate from the Federal Service for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.
Export controls create a barrier for cultural exchange with other countries, said Viktor Petrakov, the service’s acting head.
“We have archaic legislation, which creates big difficulties in transferring items of cultural value,” he said at a news conference late last week.
Petrakov added, however, that the government is trying to improve the situation, having passed amendments recently that now allow for the re-export of items older than 100 years if they were brought into Russia after 2009.
The rules of the customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan “are also aimed at liberalizing this legislation,” Petrakov said.
Another problem, which might scare off potential buyers, is a lack of transparency, with fake items accounting for 10 percent to 15 percent of the market, said Tairov.
Borovkov said selling authentic items was a matter of honor for big galleries, which don’t want to risk their reputation by selling forgeries.
But even though galleries are concerned about the authenticity of the items they sell, many prominent buyers — including famous politicians and pop singers — are unlikely to be able to distinguish a real masterpiece from a fake, since they tend to decorate their houses with tasteless things, Borovkov said.